Tech contractors can find the highest average hourly rates in San Francisco Bay Area at $103 an hour, according to one finding in a new “State of Contract Work” study by Hired. Seattle tech contractors followed at $97 per hour.

Hired, a San Francisco-based online platform that matches tech workers and companies for contract and full-time work, based the report on its own data. It analyzed more than 175,000 interview requests and job offers from the past year facilitated through its marketplace of nearly 10,000 participating companies and 1.5 million job seekers.

The findings look at the state of contract work and comparisons between contract work and full-time employment. Some of those findings are:

• A 1099 contractor in the US working 40-hour weeks is paid an average of $147,680 annually, which is $24,918 more than the $122,762 gross income earned by a full-time W-2 employee.
• While income potential may be higher for contract workers, the data also shows that the average contractor on the Hired platform only works 22 hours per week on projects, not 40. However, contractors working 40-hour weeks will bring in a higher annual income than their full-time, W-2 counterparts.
• Benefits are an issue. The average full-time employee in 2016 had an out-of-pocket premium of about $100 per month. However, a mid-range single plan on the federally run Affordable Care Act marketplace is $386 per month.
• It found 16% of contract workers ultimately accept a full-time role from the company they contract with.
• Contractors in the US with 15-plus years of experience are offered an average of $28 more per hour than contractors with four to six years of experience, a difference of $58,240 annually when adjusted for a 40-hour work week.